CloudFlare CDN Settings

How to Configure Cloud CDN

In this article, you will find detailed information on the options you can change for your CloudFlare CDN service. Note, that some of the options are available only for CloudFlare PLUS users. If you try to enable feature available only for the PLUS users, you will be provided with a link to upgrade your CloudFlare CDN service.

Basic CloudFlare Settings

On the Settings tab, you will see a list of options that you can enable or disable for the selected domain.

The options, you can configure are as follows:

CloudFlare Caching Level - You can chose between Basic and Aggressive mode. The basic setting will cache most static resources (i.e., CSS, images, and JavaScript). The aggressive setting will cache all static resources, including ones with a query string. The simplified setting will ignore the query string when delivering a cached resource.

Cache Purge - The Purge button will clear the cached content for your site. You can use it if you want to immediately preview any changes you've made to your site.

Development Mode - Development Mode temporarily allows you to enter development mode for your websites if you need to make changes to your site. This will bypass CloudFlare's accelerated cache and slow down your site, but is useful if you are making changes to cacheable content (like images, CSS, or JavaScript) and would like to see those changes right away. Note: Once entered, development mode will last for 3 hours and then automatically toggle off.

CloudFlare Security Settings - Adjust the basic security level to modify which visitors CloudFlare will limit from visiting your website. A low security setting will prevent only the most threatening visitors from accessing your site. A high security setting will block all visitors that have exhibited threatening behavior within the last 14 days. Essentially off will act only against the most grievous offenders. We recommend starting out at low. I'm Under Attack Mode should only be used when a site is having a DDoS attack. Visitors will see a processing page for about five seconds while we analyze the traffic and behavior to make sure it is a legitimate human visitor trying to access your site.

Always Online - Always Online keeps your site online, even if your server goes down. CloudFlare will serve pages from the cache, so your visitor still sees some of the pages they are trying to visit. Your visitor will see a message at the top of the page telling them that they are in offline browsing mode. As soon as your server comes back online, CloudFlare will bump users back to regular browsing seamlessly.

If CloudFlare does not have the requested page in its cache, the visitor sees an error page letting them know that the website page they are requesting is offline.

Email Obfuscation Parameters - By enabling the Email Address Obfuscation CloudFlare feature, CloudFlare will encrypt email addresses on your web page from bots, while keeping them visible to humans. There are no visible changes to your website for visitors.

Railgun - accelerates the connection between CloudFlare and the SiteGround server. It uses web performance optimisation technology to increase considerably the delivery speed of uncacheble dynamic and personalised content. To take advantage of it you need to switch it ON.

CloudFlare Plus Settings

At the bottom of the page, you will find the Additional Plus Features tab, which contains settings available for the CloudFlare PLUS users only.

Polish: Image Optimization - Strips metadata and compresses your images for faster page load times. Basic: Reduce the size of PNG, JPEG, and GIF files - no impact on visual quality. High: Further reduce the size of JPEG files for faster image loading. Larger JPEGs are converted to progressive images, loading a lower-resolution image first and ending in a higher-resolution version. Not recommended for hi-res photography sites. Note: For the service to take effect immediately, you will have to cache purge.

Mirage: Image Optimization (BETA) - Auto resize: Automatically resize images based on the visitor's device and how the image is used on the page. Requires JavaScript. Lazy loader: Automatically turns all images into load-on-demand. Images on your site are not loaded until the visitor scrolls to their location.